Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.
This week’s book:
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Blurb from GoodreadsA modern classic in the African literary canon and voted in the Top Ten Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century, this novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women’s rights. An extraordinarily well-crafted work, this book is a work of vision. Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the ‘nervousness’ of the ‘postcolonial’ conditions that bedevil us still. In Tambu and the women of her family, we African women see ourselves, whether at home or displaced, doing daily battle with our changing world with a mixture of tenacity, bewilderment and grace.
Why I Want To Read It
I am not sure where I first encountered Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga. I guess it is through a fellow book blogger or an online bookseller. I am sure of one thing, I encountered her name just recently, hence, the recent addition of Nervous Conditions in my to-be-read list even though I barely have an iota on what the book is about. I haven’t researched further as well nor checked out reviews on the book. I don’t want my opinion to tip on one scale even before I could get to the book.
Nervous Conditions is Dangarembga’s debut novel and is also the first novel to be written in English by a black Zimbabwean woman. Also tipping in favor of the book is its addition in the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. This makes me anticipate it even more. Her recent novel, This Mournable Body, was longlisted in the 2020 Man Booker Prize; I just learned that it is the third book in the Nervous Conditions Trilogy (at least for now).
Just a couple of days after being longlisted in the 2020 Man Booker Prize, Dangarembga found herself in the news again after she was arrested during an anti-government protest in the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The Booker Prize Foundation was quick to denounce this unfortunate development. Thankfully, she was released but on bail.
And thus ends my Goodreads Monday post. How about you fellow reader, what book do you want to read? I hope you can share it in the comment box. For now, happy reading! Have a great week ahead!
The Pine-Scented Chronicles 
I started quite a few classics on my Kindle, things “I should know about”. Let’s see. I should read more fiction. Best, Ivana
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Good luck on that 🙂 Happy reading!
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Brilliant! I read this last year exactly because it is a modern classic, it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and just seemed like an important book to read. I thought it was brilliant. The psychological insight and portrayal of the character Tambudzai was so engaging for me, a real cultural appreciation. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The second book was good, though not quite as engaging and by the third I just wanted to know how she was going to fare, knowing it was going to be challenging given the conditioned colonial style education she’d been given. It’s all so thought provoking and insightful, though difficult to write about, as you read in a kind of ‘listening and observing’ mode.
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Thanks for your insight on the book. I just hope I gain a copy of the book. 🙂
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